Laura Ingraham loses advertisers, goes on ‘vacation’


Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s shtick is to bully and smear and she tried to do this to David Hogg, one of the high school survivors of the Parkland shooting, but found that young people are not pushovers for her tactics. Hogg responded by calling advertisers to boycott her show. When about a dozen of them did so, Ingraham tried to mend the damage by issuing an apology to Hogg “in the spirit of Holy Week”, a weird invoking of religion that not only did not stem the fleeing of advertisers but also prompted widespread mockery.

Ingraham then abruptly announced that she would be taking a week’s vacation, ‘pre-planned of course’, no doubt hoping the controversy would go away and her advertisers return or new advertisers take their place.

Ingraham said on air she would take Easter week off with her children and a “great line-up of guest hosts” would fill in. In an email on Saturday, a Fox News spokeswoman said the break had already been planned.

Ingraham taunted David Hogg, 17, on Twitter on Wednesday. In response, Hogg called for a boycott of advertisers on The Ingraham Angle.

Ingraham wrote that Hogg had been “Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”

Hogg is a survivor of the 14 February shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He and other classmates have become the faces of a youth-led movement for gun control reform, last weekend leading a huge protest march in Washington DC.

Hogg tweeted a list of a dozen companies that advertise on The Ingraham Angle and urged his supporters to demand they cancel their ads.

On Thursday, Ingraham tweeted an apology.

“Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA,” she wrote, “incl[uding] David Hogg. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.

She also then invited Hogg to appear on her show, an offer that he rejected, along with her apology,

During an appearance on CNN’s New Day with anchor Alisyn Camerota—who dismissed Ingraham as a biased “talk show host”—on Friday morning, Hogg rejected both Ingraham’s apology and her invitation.

Stating that he does not accept Ingraham’s apology, Hogg told CNN, “She’s only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out. And I think it’s really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after ‘apologizing’ to me.”

He used air quotes on the second instance of “apologizing.”

Even if Ingraham is a “talk-show host” as opposed to a journalist, Hogg argued that she has a “responsibility” to be more “objective” when it comes to the gun-violence issue and represent both sides of the debate.

People are a little slow in realizing that these students are tough opponents.

Comments

  1. says

    She didn’t follow the important rule of apologies: the part where you say “I won’t do that again.” That’s the problem with a lot of these media notpologies.

  2. Reginald Selkirk says

    by issuing an apology to Hogg “in the spirit of Holy Week”

    What happened in the fable of Holy Week, a famous apology? No, it was a crucifixion.

    Also, I don’t know about David Hogg specifically, but Parkland and MSD High have a fairly high Jewish population (~30%). It is quite possible that Hogg would not appreciate a reference to Christian holidays.

  3. Matt G says

    Reginald @3, especially since it was the Jews who “killed Christ”….

    Dear Republicans, conservatives, and assholes of any stripe: young people see you for who you are. Your days are numbered.

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